AFP
JUDGES to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday began debating internal regulations that will give shape to one of the decade's most anticipated international trials.
After one week of debate, foreign jurists and their Cambodian counterparts are expected this coming Saturday to adopt the rules, which have come under criticism from legal experts and genocide researchers.
Chief among them are complaints over the lack of witnesses protection.
"While the vast majority of interviewees expressed a desire to participate in the proceedings ... more than half professed a fear of the consequences of testifying,'' researchers from the Documentation Centre of Cambodia said in their response to the proposed rules.
Disputes over whether defendants can be tried in absentia, and uncertainty about civil suits have also been highlighted as problem areas.
As many as 10 former Khmer Rouge leaders could be put in the dock during the joint UN-Cambodian tribunal, legal experts say.
Co-prosecutors are expected to hand their first cases up to investigating judges by the end of the year, with the trial phase of the three-year tribunal set to start in mid-2007.
So far only two potential defendants have been arrested for crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge's brutal four-year rule in the late 1970s.
But one, military commander Ta Mok, died in July, raising fears that other elderly regime cadre would die before being brought to justice.
As many as two million people died of starvation, overwork and execution between 1975 and 1979 as the communist Khmer Rouge drove Cambodia's entire population onto vast collective farms in their bid to create an agrarian utopia.
After one week of debate, foreign jurists and their Cambodian counterparts are expected this coming Saturday to adopt the rules, which have come under criticism from legal experts and genocide researchers.
Chief among them are complaints over the lack of witnesses protection.
"While the vast majority of interviewees expressed a desire to participate in the proceedings ... more than half professed a fear of the consequences of testifying,'' researchers from the Documentation Centre of Cambodia said in their response to the proposed rules.
Disputes over whether defendants can be tried in absentia, and uncertainty about civil suits have also been highlighted as problem areas.
As many as 10 former Khmer Rouge leaders could be put in the dock during the joint UN-Cambodian tribunal, legal experts say.
Co-prosecutors are expected to hand their first cases up to investigating judges by the end of the year, with the trial phase of the three-year tribunal set to start in mid-2007.
So far only two potential defendants have been arrested for crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge's brutal four-year rule in the late 1970s.
But one, military commander Ta Mok, died in July, raising fears that other elderly regime cadre would die before being brought to justice.
As many as two million people died of starvation, overwork and execution between 1975 and 1979 as the communist Khmer Rouge drove Cambodia's entire population onto vast collective farms in their bid to create an agrarian utopia.
3 comments:
Here is one question that international community should put into consideration. Putting only remaining Khmer Rouge on trial would never fairly bring justice to the Cambodian victims. If UN plays a fair domino game, the trial will affect other countries like China, Vietnam and United States. How would a Khmer Rouge tial bring a fair justice to the Cambodian victims? Big men in Cambodia also played some parts of the Killing Fields too? What can the trial do to them??? You need to think twice before you process your trial???
I say enough talking already! Let get on with the trial!
REFORME THE CAMBODIAN ROYAL POLICE AND ARMY OR MOVE THE TRAIL TO PARIS AND LET VITNESSES STAY THEIR FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES FOR SAVETY!
IF YOU PRETEND NOT TO KNOW THE UNJUSTICE AND SYSTENATIC KILLING IN THE COUNTRY, WHEN MORE INOCENT PPEOPLE GET KILL MAY GOD CURSE YOU AND YOUR NEXT GENERATION FOR INTERNITY ( FOR WHOME MAY INVOLVE )
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